[Vision2020] Myth of smaller class sizes

[George Potter]

Dale,

There are other issues here besides just class sizes.  Here are a few of them:

1.  In the US, the general idea that drives public education is that all children can achieve at high standards.  In many other countries, students who struggle for any reason are tracked out of the academic arena and are put into other areas, whether they be technical, vocational, or internship/apprenticeship job training.  If you have a class of high-achievers, yes you can teach with 30, 40, or 50 to 1 student/teacher ratios and have students succeed.

2.  IEPs.  In a typical class of 25 students, you may have anywhere from 4 to 10 students with individual education plans that are different than the "average" student, that the teacher must accommodate.  (Actually, the school must accommodate, and thereby forces the teacher to accommodate).  These students may have learning disabilities, emotional handicaps, behavioral problems, and may just be violent.  (My favorite handicap--oppositional defiant disorder--they defy authority.  How do you think they respond in a classroom with a teacher that is trying to maintain order?)  All of these students must be accommodated by the public school.  If they are suspended or expelled, the school must provide home tutoring at school's expense.  If they are held out of a mainstream classroom,  you now have one teacher with maybe 3-4 students.  This affects your overall student teacher ratios.  Again, this does not occur in other countries to the extent it does in the US.

Attitudes about learning.  A large group of parents and children in the US (in some places even a majority) feel that all learning should be done by students between 8:30 and 3:15.  Students in other countries have much higher homework requirements than in the US.

2nd attitude about learning:  Learning should be "fun."  This has led to teachers trying to "entertain" their students, and students expecting to be entertained.  The rewards of education and learning in the US have become far too extrinsic--we need to somehow get people to understand and focus on the intrinsic rewards of learning.

In conclusion, you are right that some countries educate better with higher student/teacher ratios.  However, they do not operate under a system anything like the United States', and therefore your arguments, I think, lose some strength due to these systemic differences.

George Potter